Activision Blizzard Stock Drops Over Starcraft II Fears

One of the biggest videogames slated to be released in 2009 is Starcraft II, the Blizzard-developed sequel to what might just be the most important real time strategy title of all time.

But with the company announcing a beta for the game for the fall and with various spokespersons saying that six months might pass from the beginning of the testing phase until the official release, more and more people are thinking that Starcraft II will not be coming out in 2009, which promptly led to the stock value of Activision Blizzard dropping by no less than 14% in about one month.

One analyst, Jess Lubert from Brean Murray, told Marketwatch that “The beta testing for StarCraft hasn't started yet. If it starts in August and takes 5-6 months, then launching the game this year is next to impossible.” This basically means that the revenue the mammoth release would bring will not be arriving during this fiscal year, mainly because Starcraft II will not be outed during the usually dead months at the beginning of 2010.

Blizzard has always said that Starcraft II will only be launched once the development team is completely satisfied with the state of the final product but gamers will nonetheless be disappointed to see that their long awaited game is pushed back to the next year. This fallows already controversial decisions, like splitting the single player portion of the game into three separate releases and eliminating LAN play support from to limit piracy and force players to use Battle.net.

Activision has already delayed one videogame, Singularity, pointing that the shooter will be released in 2010 in order not to compete directly with Modern Warfare 2, which is still set to appear this fall. Other high profile games that have been pushed back are BioShock 2, Bayonetta, Red Steel 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction.